


Side Chapter

by Laurasauras



Series: Prince of Grief [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Side Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurasauras/pseuds/Laurasauras
Summary: Side chapter(s?) for Prince of Grief





	Side Chapter

Feferi is faster than you but the hallways aren’t made for sprinting down, so you’re barely dragged along. You can hear the rest of your clade catching up after you. Gamzee overtakes you with his ludicrously long legs. Equius keeps pace, Nepeta in his arms. Apparently everyone’s coming. 

Vriska holds the door open for everyone with a possessive grin, as if this is her ship, not Feferi’s. Not yours. You feel a surge of competitiveness. You dive feet first into your dock and the tendrils start eagerly leeching into your legs. Eridan is waiting for you and starts plugging you in with practiced hands. It might be a different ship and a different time, but he knows what to do. The second Eridan clicks the final cable into the base of your skull and slides your helmet on, you reach out.

Nine bodies inside you, you close your doors. They’re all secure, you can feel them steady and safe inside you. Still, best to prepare them.

‘BLAST OFF, MOTHERFUCKERS!’ you scream, and your flesh body says it along with your speakers. Hands touch your walls in preparation and you leap into the sky. You have eyes on the outside and on the inside and it’s easy to get distracted by your clade moving around, but you’re used to this, you’ve done this with bigger crews, stupider crews and you’re dynamite. Your brain is so much  _ faster _ like this, it’s finally able to keep up with the ideals you always knew it was capable of. 

You can reach into Feferi’s clamtop and find the app that tracks her mirror’s location, dig out the data and translate it all in less than a second. And in less than a minute you are entering the perfect point of Skaia’s atmosphere, gentler than any other ship, than any other pilot because you’re the best of both.

You engage jets to balance the resistance and counteract the turbulence that almost hits the ship. You’re too good for it. Your hack into satellites to confirm that you’re in the right spot (you are, you’ve got good eyes on the outside of your ship and you know your shit) and then touch down so gently on the street that the stupid flesh people inside you don’t even realise you’ve landed.

‘This is your captain speaking. Fuck off and bring back our Karkat.’

You open your doors and feel Feferi’s sure footsteps on your ramp. Gamzee rushes out past her. You switch to your external cameras to watch him steal Karkat and sit with him under the shade of your bow. You leave them to it while you hack into the building’s cameras.

Everyone with functioning legs follows Feferi’s lead except Kanaya, who sits by your console. You display your feed on there so she can see what is going on without needing to get close to the humans. 

Tavros pats your flesh and you open your eyes.

‘That seemed, uh, quite fast?’ he says.

‘Fastest in the fleet,’ you say with a grin.

‘You should not explode your blood out of your face on the way back,’ he says. ‘That’s … just so gross.’

You would roll your eyes at him, but you’ve only allocated 8% of your processing to the conversation and body movements require more. You’re inside the building now and holy shit they’ve made a mess.

‘Your lusus is gross,’ you tell him.

‘Uh, that is probably true, because he is dead, but, uh, also that is a mean thing to say and I won’t let it affect me.’

‘You do you, Tavros.’

‘I’m just saying, that you should take us home at a normal speed, for an awesome spaceship.’

‘Uh huh, I’ll do that. Now shut up with your concern, I don’t need Eridan picking a fight with me. Jegus, there’s like 50 bodies in here. I’m skinny as fuck and I can get Karkat on his back, how the fuck does he do this.’

‘I think it was probably Terezi.’

You hum in maybe-agreement. A lot of these bodies have the small stab wounds that you associate with Terezi’s rapier cane, but others have been sliced up, which is very sickle like to you. 

‘What are you doing?’ Tavros asks.

‘Stealing their security footage. Watching the highlights. I think I’ll watch the fucker that cut Rose’s cheek die in regular time. Maybe even slow motion.’

‘Rose got hurt?’

‘It’s not bad,’ you assure him. ‘Fef’s already healed her. She’s healing Dirk now. Ugh, he’s such a douchebag, I don’t get what Karkat sees in him.’

‘Well, Karkat dated you, so his track record with taste isn’t, uh, very good.’

You laugh and start pulling data from the last six months into your hard drive. You’ll go through it later. There’s footage, correspondence, browsing … You scan for keywords as a matter of course, making sure that they haven’t been plotting assassinations in an obvious way. If they speak in code that’ll make it harder. You dive through their connection to their most frequent contact and gather data from them, too. You’re ghosting, erasing your tracks as you go. 

Feferi orders several members of your clade to pick up the unconscious humans and bring them back to you. You light up the path to the infirmary for them.

‘Humans incoming,’ you say. 

Kanaya sits up a little straighter and Tavros wheels around so he’s facing the entrance. If you weren’t a rad spaceship you might not have seen Kanaya take out her lipstick and hold it discreetly in her palm. As it is, you don’t care. No one is getting into a fight in your ship. You’d just take all their oxygen away.

You watch as Gamzee pulls Karkat up and automatically reverse image search a match on his facepaint to find out exactly what Gamzee’s done to him. As per usual, it’s reminiscent of plenty and yet entirely Gamzee’s own design. You think it’s supposed to just be deadly looking, like all juggalo faces. You’re not quite sure how Karkat sits still and calm while his moirail smears blood on him, but hey, that’s not your problem.

Feferi and Dirk are standing on your ramp, watching Karkat and Gamzee with Rose and Dave. 

‘He’s not her dad,’ Dirk says.

‘Isn’t he?’ Feferi asks. ‘He loves her in a way that is entirely too human.’

‘You don’t sound pleased.’

‘Would you be pleased if your most trusted ambassador was compromised like this?’ She sighs. ‘I’ve known Karkat since we were children. He’s pale for anyone he speaks more than two sentences to. He goes completely overboard. I mean, that’s  _ part _ of why I chose him for you in the  _ first place _ ! It seemed pretty glubbing important that the relationship was at least partially codvincing. And the rest of these finless fools are just obviously not suited for diplomacy.’

‘So what now?’

‘Now we figure out what the glub happened here and fix it so it doesn’t happen again! Preferably without too much bloodshed!’

They both go silent as the others head over to them.

Dirk stops Karkat from entering the ship and the others follow Feferi in. 

‘What was Poptart saying about slam poetry?’ Dave asks Gamzee.

You resolutely tune that conversation out.

‘That’s a fucked up power you’ve got,’ Dirk says to Karkat.

What? Karkat’s psionics are pissweak, he can feel people’s presences and heartbeats, what’s fucked up about that? And something to do with finding people who are connected in some way, but that’s more his ancestor’s thing. Maybe Dirk doesn’t know about Kankri and Karkat’s taking the credit.

‘Did you kidnap us?’ Dirk asks.

Inside you, Feferi is cornering Terezi and asking for a report. Vriska is holding her hand but compared to the pornographic display that Karkat and Gamzee put on before, her show of moirallegiance is downright dull.

You get an alert that law enforcement vehicles are on their way to you. 

‘I’m not a weapon,’ Karkat is saying to Dirk. ‘I’m a novelist. Can you wait until we’re not nook deep in  _ apparently  _ enemy territory to start your revenge plans?’

Is Dirk holding his hand? Is he  _ trying _ to lead Karkat on? What a sick fuck. 

‘Can I not just type it up for you and hand it in tomorrow?’ Terezi says.

‘Your memory is fresh now!’ Feferi insists.

‘My whole brain is exhausted, Empress!’

You hack into surrounding traffic lights and cause enough confusion that the cops won’t be able to get to you. Easier than hacking into the cars themselves.

There are too many conversations going on at once. You decide to just record them all to listen to later. Maybe Tavros is right, you might be doing a lot at once but you’re better than this. You burnt yourself out on that first flight.

You sweep through everyone’s devices while you’re still somewhat functioning and retrieve conversations that aren’t between clade. Letters are more trusted, and for good reason. Reason like you. Dirk’s device puts up a fight so you let that one go. Karkat’s on his way over to you. You give your body 35% processing power so you don’t freak him out.

Everyone’s talking at once and you need to fly and talk normal and you gave your body too much processing because now you can feel the slime on your skin and you  _ hate  _ that, you  _ hate _ having a flesh body, you wish you could be a proper pilot.

You play it cool for Karkat. You push the self-loathing to the side and reduce body awareness to 3%. You record everything without actually listening live and free up enough space to exit the atmosphere of Skaia without any problems. God, it would be so embarrassing if you weren’t the best on the way back.


End file.
